Euromax Resources (OTCQX: EOXFF; TSX-V: EOX) has outlined an aggressive drill program to test multiple new targets at its 100% controlled KMC Copper-Gold Project, Serbia, in 2012. Multiple new targets defined by magnetic, induced polarization (IP) and resistivity data collected in late 2011 will be tested by a planned 8,000 meter diamond drill program beginning in April of this year.

According to Quinton Hennigh, Chief Geologist of Euromax Resources, “Now that we have analyzed our comprehensive geophysical dataset from KMC, we are planning an aggressive drill program to test multiple new drill targets at our KMC project. Previous drilling at KMC has already identified a robust copper-gold skarn system at Copper Canyon. Our new dataset clearly indicates the presence of at least seven additional large geophysical anomalies similar in nature to Copper Canyon. Some of these are associated with strong surface geochemical anomalism. Beginning in late April, we will undertake systematic drilling of these new targets that we believe could generate significant results at KMC.”

Thom Calandra of Torrey Hills Capital/Babybulls.com comments on mining experts (expertise + experience – ego = expert) as well as the current gold, copper and platinum martets with Daniela Cambone of Kitco News at the recent Cambridge House Resource Stock Conference in Palm Desert California. To view the 6 minute interview just click on the graphic below:

The Gold Report: The TSX Venture Composite Index reached a bottom of around 1,300 in October after it more than tripled from 2009 to early 2011. You believe the index is poised for another two-year gain. It’s an interesting theory. Why should we believe that history will more or less repeat itself so quickly?

Michael Ballanger: It’s all about mathematics. However, underneath that forecast lurks a much deeper premise. I’m a member of a very small minority that believes we’re now in the continuation of a massive bull market in resources. The TSX Venture Exchange has had one sharp correction since 2008. It’s now resuming its uptrend.

I’m also looking for a resurgence of the “manic phase” of markets. During the last manic phase in 1978-1981, the Vancouver Stock Exchange quadrupled in an 18-month period as gold went into its final ascendancy.

The Gold Report: What is the consensus among Haywood analysts on what 2012 will bring for mine commodities, particularly precious metals?

Joe Mazumdar: Last year, risk aversion was a common market theme. In 2012, some of the same global economic concerns, such as the ongoing Eurozone crisis and the future of the euro, will continue to draw attention. But we also believe there is potential for positive economic indicators, primarily from the U.S., where there have been upticks in manufacturing and GDP growth. Also, unemployment in the U.S. is down to 8.5%, generating some consumer confidence. Recently, GDP growth for Q411 came in at 2.8%, which was slower than consensus forecasts-3%-but still the strongest in over a year.

Political factors will play a role in 2012. There could be a change in leadership among four of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. The presidential election will be a key focus of the U.S. and global market. There are also presidential elections in Russia, France and Mexico. There also may be a changing of the guard in China in the latter part of 2012. The potential for changes in leadership in these key nations will generate a bid to market volatility in 2012.

Beyond gold and silver, our preferred commodity sectors include copper, iron ore and coal. Gold continues to be adversely affected by its own volatility, which continues to tarnish its reputation as a safe-haven asset. We note that during 2011, U.S. Treasury securities, the most liquid safe-haven asset, was a preferred recipient of capital investment, providing a ~10% return, its highest annual return since 2008 when it was 14%.

I don’t say that easily, as I am more a text-pert: newspapers, wire, Internet … than I am a broadcaster: CBS Radio, MarketWatch, national and local TV.

Here are a couple vids from the Cambridge House Metals Conference in Vancouver. On the actionable front, please note companies in the 3-minute splice that might have actionable events in coming days and weeks. In the RECAP video, for instance, you’ll see a few company posters and presenters at their exhibit hall booths. Jot down their names. I think one or two will see bust-out assays or sizeable additions to their compliant resources in short order. (More actionables in second half of this article.)

Here is another vid, this one me yakking with Scott Gibson of Canada’s Kitco. (See video.) I mention Dr. Copper and several companies that are developing what they believe are significant gold-copper porphyrys. In Colombia and Nicaragua. Watch it.

Sandspring's Richard Munson

On the Torrey Hills front: Scorpio Gold (SGN) shares are now above a buck. They’re a client of the firm, and I know CEO Peter Hawley and have seen the Nevada project. What else? Michael Nikiforuk from African Gold Group (AGG) is in Cape Town this week for the INDABA conference. So is CEO Paul Zyla from Xtra-Gold Resources (XTG). They are both clients, and I own shares of both and have seen their projects (Ghana, Mali) numerous times.

This is the first year in a while that I have not hopped a flight to Africa in February; it’s usually a good time to see properties because everyone is there for INDABA and one other show. I guess I have Cambodia (two paragraphs down for more) on the brain. I have a few folks scouting the Cape Town show for me and reporting back on the Africa companies I have surveyed over the years. These include Mike Jones and his Platinum Group Metals (PTM and PLG), which is a client of Torrey Hills and a South Africa mine developer, along with its neighbour, Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Nickel & Platinum. I have owned both shares, one private and one public, for many, many years.

My ownership list for the great continent of Africa includes PMI Gold (PMV), Stellar Diamonds (STEL in London), Tigray Resources (TIG), Canaco (CAN), Great Basin Gold (GBG), Platinum Group Metals (PLG), Ivanhoe Nickel & Platinum and West African Iron Ore (WAI). Oh, and one hapless and disorganized tantalum prospector in Mozambique that has melted down in value, and not UP: Noventa (NTA).

Next weekend, I’m speaking in the California desert. Cambridge House California Feb. 11-12. That’s in Indian Wells, California, USA. If you have time, please come by and say hello. I have a few metals equities surprises that even the experts have not staked out. I speak on Sunday, Feb. 12. Lots of friends and colleagues will be there, including Cambridge House’s Joe Martin, GATA’s Bill Murphy, Chris Powell and, I am told, Murphy siblings; that’s plural siblings. The Queen of England is celebrating her 60th year of a monarchy; who knows what in the name of gold or golf the Bill Murphy family is celebrating. I do know the non-profit educator Gold Anti-Trust Action Comittee (GATA) is celebrating its 12th year of anarchy.

Also converging on this Indian Wells hotel that I imagine will melt up in the desert springs of gold, golf, and GATA : our gang from Torrey Hills Capital, Texas asset manager Frank Holmes, diamond maven Colin Ferguson and other gold (and golf) pros. I can’t wait. I went to graduate school in the Arizona desert and was lucky to snag a master’s degree or two amid the cacti and hallucinogens. For me, returning to the desert, ANY desert, is a melt-up, strip-down mineralized affair.

After the California desert, it’s off to Cambodia to see properties under development by Mike Weeks’ Angkor Gold (ANK). I own the shares, having broken a rule I set last year about NEVER purchasing anything before I see it with my own eyes. (The gold grades look giddy they’re so high. We’ll see.)

I also will be spending time with Mr. Weeks and his wife, Delayne Adams, as we deliver medical equipment from their stomping grounds in Alberta, Canada, and as we assist a Cambodia hospital. Mike and a group of his oil & gas friends have their own money in Angkor Gold; now isn’t that a crowd pleaser. Their community contributions in ravaged Cambodia qualify the two of them and their friends and company for nominations to the just-created (this moment) 2012 Siddhartha Award For Sacrifice & Grace. (Photo courtesy Angkor Gold)

Oh yes, before I forget, a friend at the health club in Strawberry this weekend dropped in to ask why Revett Minerals (RVM) is sitting back, share-price-wise, whilst lots of other silver companies have seen some heady share action these past two weeks. My answer on that is “Just Wait & See.” John Shanahan’s Revett is not just pure silver from the Troy Mine in Montana; it’s poly metallic. I think the shares this coming week will reach all-time highs as folks realize the potential of Revett’s Rock Creek project. I own the shares, and Revett is a Torrey Hills Capital client.

Revett, along with several other companies, including Manitoba’s Carlisle Gold (CGJ) and Ghana/Mali’s African Gold Group, are on my 2012 takeover roster. I own many shares of both, all purchased in the market; only AGG is a Torrey Hills client. Also on the cheap heap is Sandspring Resources (SSP), whose Guyana project I have seen a couple of times. It’s copper and gold. That’s CEO Rich Munson in the photo, above — at the Vancouver metals show. I own Sandspring shares, but they have been hammered — in fact, more than most any metals equity I follow.

On the SSP front, since I was a believer in the Guyana prospector as recently as five or six months ago, I have to say I am concerned to see Abraham Drost, who was president of Sandspring and is a Thunder Bay resident and geologist, leave Sandspring. I follow Tall Abraham as an indicator of hard work, clean living, smart corporate choices and safe driving (not always a given with brilliant geos). The good news is that Mr. Drost is now pitching in BIGTIME at Howard Katz’s Tamaka Gold, an Ontario project that I have seen and that is shaping up as the second coming of Osisko Meets Rainy Creek. Tamaka’s market debut, using the ticker TKT in Canada, is just around the corner. I think Tamaka might blow out the cobwebs that cloak Northeast Canada metals valuations. We’ll see.

Birthday wishes: To Hugh Clarke of Endeavour Silver (EXK and EDR); he turns a round-number this week; thank you, Hugh you, for contributing vastly to my monetary wealth here at home … and to my growing wealth of knowledge about silver, about Mexico and about coolness.

THOM CALANDRA is a principal of Torrey Hills Capital and a lifelong journalist. He co-founded CBS MarketWatch and FT MarketWatch. (Also, co-founder of Stockhouse’s Ticker Trax) His reviews of natural resources companies are found on this Baby Bulls, at the Cambridge Cafe, on GATA.org and on Stockhouse. Also: The Gold Report, 321Gold.com and other publishers of metals material. Thom is an investor and a speaker for Cambridge House in Canada and the New Orleans Investment Conference. Thom also speaks in San Francisco, New York and in Europe. He lives with his family in California.

VANCOUVER, Canada — Vancouver’s two January resources get-ups, Cambridge House for investors and B.C. Round Up for geos & technicians, gave us flogging five-day rains, one superb NHL hockey match … and plenty of hard-asset bravado:

“I don’t own stocks any more; I own colored diamonds,” diamond seller Colin Ferguson told me at a private party I hosted with Cambridge House‘s Joe Martin. (I invite the guests and Joe entertains ’em.) Mr. Ferguson, a 51-year-old Vancouver Island resident, says we’ll see reports of diamond warehousing by aggressive hedge funds. Worldwide demand for diamonds is on track to exceed supply by 7 million carats. The “coloreds,” champagnes (cognac hues), pinks, blues and greens, are beginning to flash in fashion-minded markets. Colin will be at Mr. Martin’s Palm Springs investment conference at Indian Wells, California, in two weeks. I want to see more of these stones. (See: www. cambridgehouse.com)

Dr. Clarke At PMI Gold Booth

“Poly-metallic mines and properties are always in demand,” Tom Macneill says. I came across Mr. Macneill, a lifelong Saskatchewan resident and longtime chief of 49 North Resources (FNR in Canada), across the street from Waterfront at lunchtime. Tom, sitting at a lunch counter, is sitting on his merchant bank’s 10-percent-plus ownership of surging DNI Metals (DNI). DNI is a northern Canada smorgasbord of elements in an expansive property portfolio. I am fortunate to own FNR and DNI after a fishing trip a couple years back with Tom, Bob Bishop, Doug Casey and others, way up there in Saskatchewan. (By the way, Mr. Macneill is hot on uranium prospectors right now — especially one big one whose first letter is C and its last O.)

I tested my latest think on the exhibit floor at the Joe show; copper-gold porphyrys will outpace market gains of all metals equities in coming weeks. “When Dr. Copper is in the house, it’s a very, very, very good house,” says Don Mosher. Don represents Riverstone Resources (RVS), a Burkina Faso prospector whose shares look ready to bust out after a largely ignored resource report. A geologist I rely on for analysis, Dr. Peter Megaw of Minaurum (Gold (MGG), Candente Gold and others, told me, “Copper is a big-company business. A billion tonnes of half-percent copper with the gold credit blended in, that takes care of a lot of the risk of taking on a development.”

Euromax Resources (OTCQX: EOXFF; TSX-V: EOX) has 100% control of its Ilovitza Copper Gold Porphyry Project in Macedonia. Prior to this release, Freeport-McMoran held a back-in right to acquire a 70% interest in the Ilovitza property. However, Freeport has elected not to exercise the back-in right (see November 29 news release).

According to Quinton Hennigh, the Company’s Chief Geologist, “Our drilling has already demonstrated that Ilovitza is a large Cu-Au porphyry complex, and we also have good geologic and geophysical evidence which indicates that further drilling could significantly expand the known mineralization.” comments Quinton Hennigh, Chief Geologist for EurOmax. “In gaining 100% control over this project, we are now free to proceed with exploration in areas to the southeast and east where we have indications there is significant potential for growth of our resource. We are planning step-out drilling in these areas for 2012. In addition, an updated NI43-101 compliant resource estimate for Ilovitza is expected to be completed this quarter.”